You will never have to worry about your website breaking again

As you walk to the coffee machine at your morning networking. You start a conversation with the website developer. You go to make the coffee she’s chatting away giving you lots of tips and ideas. The coffee machine is loud, coffee drips out into your cup, you are eagerly awaiting your morning coffee. The smell of the breakfast from the kitchen, the chatter of people in the room. You start thinking about your day and how you can’t wait to sit down and take your first sip. ‘Does that sound like a good idea’ she pipes up. “Um sorry, what were you saying?”

Does this happen to you? When techie types talk about your website to you, do you do the same?

You don’t need to worry that there is techy stuff you don’t get or don’t know how to do. We are not experts in your field so we don’t expect you to be an expert in ours. Here are a few common problems that techy people like us could sort out for you.

• Your website pages take ages to load – this could be down to poor internet, large image files or just a badly made site.
• You don’t know if you have had any enquiries because you don’t know where they go – this is the most common problem we have when taking on a site, so if this is you, don’t worry, so many people are in the same boat as you. It is of course good to know this so you can follow up leads and potentially get some more clients.
• Parts of your site have stopped working – this could be a number of things but most often you may just need to update a few plugins or reinstall a new version of the similar one. It is important that this is done to keep you site running smoothly to ensure potential customers are able to use your site with ease and not want to swear at your site every time they try and do something.

Fix it like a pro

You have four options to fix it like a pro but we recommend you start simple, just getting started will be progress for your website. Having a plan in place like FIX spreads the cost of any updates your site will need and allow us to spot any potential problems. This will mean your users are not getting a good experience from your website if parts of it are not working properly. If your site is full of errors they won’t be able to or may not want to enquire about your service.

Potential problems that you may not be aware of are:

1. 1. 404 errors – a page on your website might have been deleted, been replaced or had a name change. This makes it impossible for the user to find it. Imagine sending someone to this page and then getting an email from the potential client to say they couldn’t get on it, they got an error.
   2. Broken links – a link from your site to another site is incorrect or goes to a page that no longer exists
   3. Pages not loading – if your pages are too large or full of unnecessarily large images they may take a long time to load. You may not be aware of this if you have a good internet connection but slower connections may struggle
   4. Parts of your site not working on different browsers – browser compatibility is sometimes still an issue. Users that use Microsoft Edge for example may have a different experience to those using Chrome or Safari. Sites need to be checked for issues in all main browsers.
   5. Items you thought were clickable not working – do you have pdf’s for people to download or images to click to take users to other pages? Do they work on desktop and mobile?
   6. Out of date info still on your site – We recently worked on a site that had a messages for their users in brackets that went something like – ‘we are aware of the issue with the images, we plan to have fixed this by the end of 2011’. No excuse, this is sloppy.
   7. Tel links not working – Have you tested your tel links on your site from a mobile, do they work, does it call the correct number?
   8. Google not knowing you exist – for Google to know you are there, you create need some helpful info on the site for both your user and the search engines. A separate contact us page and repeated info in the footer of your website. Business name, address, contact details and perhaps links to other info such as privacy policies and t’s & c’s

   Simple fixes = hello Google

   We will ensure these things are looked at regularly for you. We will also check the security of your site and improve it if necessary. So many sites still don’t have an SSL in place. This can be done as part of your FIX package. There is so much more to FIX than basic maintenance. This is affordable web management which also allows for minor amends such as changing an address, adding a new image, correcting a spelling error or adding a social media link to your site for no extra cost. All of this – even at this level will also help your site become more visible to Google. Small updates and minor amends if completed regularly can help with how easily people will find you in Google.

   This how people on pages two and three can still get some goods leads, the sites that rank above yours may not be working on that day, gave errors, be poorly laid out or simply not fit the users requirements. So if you are further down the rankings do not worry, just focus on getting good systems in place first. It will pay off.